Due Diligence | Podcast on RSS.com

Due Diligence

by Henrick Johansson

Entrepreneurship Investing

Season 1

Hubert Thieblot - Why This VC Writes $150K Checks Based on Vibes

Hubert Thieblot has spent decades building and investing at the edge of gaming, startups, AI, and Silicon Valley. He is best known as the founder of Curse, the modding platform behind some of the largest communities in games like World of Warcraft and Minecraft. In this episode, Hubert explains why he left Europe for San Francisco, why Silicon Valley rewards speed in a way Europe often does not, and why he believes the best founders are usually ambitious, technical, and willing to move before everything is figured out. He also shares why he sometimes invests based on “vibe,” what he looks for in very young founders, and why he is willing to back 17- and 18-year-olds building robots, machine learning projects, and hard technology.

Episode 2: WeTransfer, Facebook & Ramp: Why Joining Facebook Was The Worst Decision Ever

Henrick Johansson sits down with product design leader Simon Corry in New York City for a wide-ranging conversation about creativity, compliance, velocity, and what it really takes to build products people trust. Simon traces his unlikely path from British art school and Royal Mail to Amsterdam’s creative scene, where the early ideas behind WeTransfer grew out of a very real problem: agencies needed a simple, trustworthy way to send large files without accounts, passwords, or friction. From there, the conversation moves through Facebook, anonymity, AI regulation, and Simon’s current work at Ramp, where speed, recruitment, education, and culture are central to scaling without becoming slow. At the heart of the interview is a tension every modern company faces: how do you move fast without losing responsibility, customer empathy, or trust? Simon argues that great teams win by listening closely, staying willing to be wrong, and avoiding the gatekeepers that slow progress down. This is a conversation about design leadership, startup culture, product velocity, AI, compliance, and the human judgment required to build companies that can move quickly without breaking what matters. Featuring stories from WeTransfer, Facebook, Royal Mail, and Ramp, this episode is for anyone interested in product design, leadership, startups, fintech, compliance, AI, and the future of fast-moving teams.

Episode 1: Martin Shkreli - Prison, Rules, and Life Behind Bars

What happens when you sit down for a simple game of chess… and end up in a deep conversation about prison, rules, and human nature?

Why You Should Stop Sending Data to OpenAI - Sam Hogan, Inference Founder | Due Diligence Ep. 5

Sam Hogan is the founder and CEO of Inference, an AI infrastructure company building a private, cheaper alternative to frontier models from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Instead of forcing companies to send sensitive data to third-party model providers, Inference helps businesses train and host large language models with more control, privacy, and flexibility. In this episode, Sam explains why companies may not want to send their data to frontier AI labs, why he believes open and private model infrastructure will matter, and why Inference is trying to make large language models cheaper and easier for enterprises to run. He also talks about raising $11 million, building one of the largest decentralized GPU clusters on Solana, why the company moved away from crowdsourced compute, and what it takes to build trust when selling AI infrastructure to serious customers.

Episode 3: Zoltan Szalas - Why Offices Will Never Be the Same Again

Zoltan Szalas has spent years building at the intersection of product, growth, AI, workspace, and distributed teams. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Croissant, a company building the system of record for variable workspace - replacing traditional office leases and workspace stipends with controlled, usage-based spend. In this episode, Zoltan explains why the way we work has permanently changed, why companies are moving away from long-term leases, and why the future of work will look more flexible, distributed, and usage-based. He also shares how AI is forcing leaders to rethink hiring, office strategy, and workforce planning in real time. Zoltan is the CEO & Co-Founder of Croissant. He previously served as Vice President of Product Management at Appfire, Head of Product & Growth at Printify, Director of Product Management for Growth, Data & AI at IBM, and has advised founders and portfolio companies on product, growth, and business strategy.

Is the Cart Certified? Due Diligence. Coming Soon

Henrick Johansson asks the questions nobody else will. Due Diligence is a new podcast featuring sharp, satirical conversations with founders, operators, and investors in tech. One guest a week. All on the record. Subscribe for new episodes and follow the launch of Due Diligence.